Grey Goo sees Petroglyph return to the RTS genre

Posted By: Peter ParrishMarch 13, 2014

Had to say if that’s a base or a unit. Could be both.

Petroglyph hasn’t had the greatest run of luck recently. First they were hauled off the (now doomed) End of Nations project, then discovered the cruelties of Kickstarter with a failed campaign for a game called Victory. They even tried to maintain a MOBA (Battle of Graxia, shut down last year) which is a fate I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.

So hopefully Grey Goo, a return to the “vintage” age of Real-Time Strategy games will bring them a bit more joy.

According to Petroglyph’s Ted Morris, “We want to bring back some of what made those ‘traditional’ RTS games great while addressing all the lessons we’ve learned along the way. Grey Goo is an experience informed by the collective history of the RTS genre, infused with innovative ideas and a forward-thinking spirit that accomplish something original by incorporating new amalgams for the genre.” That sounds like the sort of phrasing people only use in press releases, but is also fairly encouraging for anyone pining for traditional style RTS games.

You can expect base building, unit management and tactical combat of some sort between three different factions: Humans, the Beta and GOO. Goo isn’t actually in all-caps, it just seemed appropriate.

Anyway, each is said to have their own distinctive style of play and access to rare “epic” units that can “tower over the battlefield.” Single and competitive multiplayer modes are present and correct, as you’d expect.

There’s an interesting sentence or two about the game’s AI right at the end of the press release, claiming that “Grey Goo’s adaptive AI studies and reacts to players’ actions, learning rather than running off scripts.” It’s aiming to be a vintage RTS, but no so vintage that it’ll send columns of tanks towards you at pre-designated periods like Dune 2.

See a bit of a teaser trailer and some rather “busy” screenshots, below.